The ArgumentVisible colleges, in contrast to the “invisible colleges” familiar to historians of science, are the collective places of science, the places where the “creation of phenomena” and theoretical speculation proceed side by side. To understand their spatial form, we must understand first how buildings can structure space to both conserve and generate social forms, depending on how they relate structure in space to randomness. Randomness is shown to play a crucial role in morphogenetic models of many kinds, especially in (...) spatial forms and in social networks. We argue here that it can also play a crucial role in the advance of science. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the discussions ofscientificlecturing in eighteenth-century London contained in this issue, the case of medicine may be said to be both more of the same but also something different.